hello everyone!
Last week was our first full week of school and it was as insane as ever. But I survived!
Isn't that basically the only goal for the first week?
I have an amazing group of kiddos this year. They are super sweet. However, I always forget how long it takes new 3rd graders to pick up routines and gain that independence (is this just us or an overall thing?)
So, while this week was mostly filled with procedures, community building, set-up (1-1 iPads is amazing but also the bane of my existence, ya know?) we actually did a few content-related things as well.
I am always so intrigued about how people plan/organize themselves for each week (or other unit of time if you don't do weeks) so I am going to show you a bit about how I do it. I can never seem to keep up with a paper planner (they are beautiful and I so wish I could) so digital is the way to go for me. I just use Keynote on my MacBook to do all of my planning. I create a Keynote for each week and keep them in a folder on my desktop. The Keynote has a schedule for each day followed by the resources I might need and slides I will use while teaching. Having everything in one place makes it easy for me to access everything I need.
On Monday, I had my kids start their home reading routine. When they enter the room, students must go to the leveled library and find a book on their current level to take home for reading. This is the only "homework" I am doing this year.
The rest of our morning routine includes students doing something on their iPads. I use several different apps (quizizz, kahoot, that quiz, etc.) to do quick reviews of things we practiced the day before.
Then, we go onto morning meeting. This is usually one of my favorite parts of the day. I love getting to know my students and watch them getting to know each other. We do morning meeting in our central library area. The leader gets to sit on the couch with me and will eventually run the meeting.
We played a would you rather game, reviewed and practiced some procedures, and went over our schedule (again) (anybody else get so tired of the schedule questions the first few weeks?!)
We did a writing lesson over friendly letters and have my kids write letters to anyone they want. I also tell them if they write to someone in the school, I will do my best to deliver it. This is an awesome first writing project because everyone wants to write to their old teacher.
Then, we start our practice for Daily 5. I set up my classroom for students to choose where they go for each Daily 5 round. They also have a lot of open choice for each option (read, write, word work, listen). This helps my kids have agency, keeps them engaged, and is less planning for me. Having open ended choices keeps people from "finishing" and my kids really love it.
But it takes a lot of work up front. We spend a lot of time talking about how to make choices and practicing. The first week we do reading stamina and practice all of our writing choices. I can write more about the choices my students have in another post. Toward the end of the week, we still start practicing word work.
Daily 5 set-up is always the one thing I wish to get through as quick as possible. It's important but painstaking and I long to start seeing guided reading groups and diving into books.
After Daily 5 we will do another reading mini-lesson and then go into stations. In our room, stations is much more rigid than Daily 5. It's how I choose to break up our curriculum instead of doing it all whole group. I see kids twice a week in this station time. The first time I see them, we do vocabulary. My kids learn & remember their words so much better when we go over them in a small group. Each group's vocabulary charts turn out so different and personal to them. The second time I see them, we do a comprehension activity with our story. Sometimes I use the curriculum story and sometimes I use a trade book. This week we are using Do Unto Otters (perfect back to school book).
In other stations, students practice words on spelling city, do an explicit writing project, and listen & answer questions about our weekly story on a Nearpod.
For math, we did a place value review and spent time setting up station expectations. I introduced my students to our Buddy Math routine (see more here) and we all practiced.
The next day, we practiced our game and then finally we practiced what to do on the iPad.
By Thursday, we were doing math stations. My students absolutely rocked it. Hands down, favorite part of our day.
Looking back, we packed a lot into our first week! We also did some visualization, types of sentences (four corners is their new favorite!), and reviewed synonyms (I have, who has is their new favorite!)
I cannot wait for the rest of an incredible year!
What did your first week look like? Leave your link below because I love to check them all out!
